Researchers from Japan and the Netherlands who were previously involved in the discovery of an exoplanet with huge rings have now calculated that the giant rings may persist more than 100,000 years, as long as the rings orbit ...

Twente PhD researcher Emiel Drenth has developed a method to determine the remaining service life of gas and water pipes. His method, which is known as micro hardness indentation, can be used on pipes made of rigid PVC (uPVC). ...

Has Australia's climate always been so dry? Have the tropical reefs around Australia always been there? What will happen to Australia's climate and reefs in the future? The answers lie deep under the ocean, five million years ...

On 15 and 16 July 2015, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Resource Board decided to enter into detailed contract negotiations for hosting CTA on the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Paranal grounds in Chile and at the ...

An ambitious European mission is being planned to answer fundamental questions about how planetary systems form and evolve. ARIEL will investigate the atmospheres of several hundred planets orbiting distant stars. It is one ...

Netherlands

The Netherlands (pronounced /ˈnɛðərləndz/ ( listen); Dutch: Nederland, pronounced [ˈneːdərlɑnt] ( listen)) is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east. The capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague.

The Netherlands is often called Holland, which is formally incorrect as North and South Holland are actually two of its twelve provinces (see terminology of "the Netherlands"). The word Dutch is used to refer to the people, the language, and anything pertaining to the Netherlands. The difference between the noun and the adjective is a peculiarity of the English language and does not exist in the Dutch language.

Being one of the first parliamentary democracies, the Netherlands was a modern country from its inception. Among other affiliations the country is a founding member of the European Union (EU), NATO, OECD, WTO, and has signed the Kyoto protocol. With Belgium and Luxembourg it forms the Benelux economic union. The country is host to five international courts: the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The former four are situated in The Hague as is the EU's criminal intelligence agency Europol. This has led to the city being dubbed "the world's legal capital".

The Netherlands is a geographically low-lying country, with about 27% of its area and 60% of its population located below sea level. Significant areas have been gained through land reclamation and preserved through an elaborate system of polders and dikes. Much of the Netherlands is formed by the estuary of three important European rivers, which together with their distributaries form the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta. Most of the country is very flat, with the exception of foothills in the far south-east and several low-hill ranges in the central parts created by ice-age glaciers.[citation needed]

The Netherlands is a densely populated country. It is known for its windmills, tulips, clogs, delftware and Gouda cheese, for its bicycles, and in addition, traditional values and civil virtues such as its social tolerance. The country has more recently become known for its liberal policies toward drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, and euthanasia.

The Netherlands has one of the most free market capitalist economies in the world, ranking 12th of 157 countries in one index.